High-Degree Concentration Organic Solvent Forward Osmosis for Pharmaceutical Pre-Concentration

Over half of the pharmaceutical industry's capital investments are related to the purification of active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs). Thus, a cost-effective purification process with a highly concentrated solution is urgently required. In addition, the purification process should be nonthermal because most APIs and their intermediates are temperature-sensitive. This study investigated a high-degree concentration organic solvent forward osmosis (OSFO) membrane process. A polyketone-based thin-film composite hollow fiber membrane with a polyamide selective layer on the bore surface was used as the OSFO membrane to achieve a high tolerance for organic solvents and an effective concentration. MeOH, sucrose octaacetate (SoA), and 2M polyethylene glycol 400 (PEG-400)/MeOH solution were used as the solvent, model API, and a draw solution (DS), respectively. OSFO was performed at room temperature (23 ± 3 °C). Consequently, the 11 wt% SoA/MeOH solution was concentrated to 52 wt% without any SoA leakage into the DS. To our knowledge, there are no studies in which up to a 5 wt% concentration by OSFO has been demonstrated. However, the final feed solution contained 17 wt% PEG-400. This study demonstrates the promising potential of OSFO for pharmaceutical pre-concentration and the technical problems that need to be solved for social implementation.